Michigan

WITH VIDEO: Letter from Ann Arbor News Publisher Laurel Champion

Ann Arbor News closureReporter Stefanie Murray talks to Ann Arbor News Publisher Laurel Champion about the closure of The News and the start-up of the new venture AnnArbor.com.

Letter From the Publisher

This is a difficult day for all of us at The Ann Arbor News. I've announced to my colleagues here that we will publish our last edition in July, when a new company called AnnArbor.com LLC will begin sharing local news and information with the community.

I don't have to tell you what a special and unique place Ann Arbor is; we get to embrace and experience our community's vibrancy daily. Our company knows that, too, and has chosen our special city to use as a laboratory to create new ways to share local news and information. Our owners have decided to continue to invest significantly in our market, and will be starting a new online media company to better service our tech-savvy readers and advertisers.

In July, AnnArbor.com will be born as an incredible community resource online, in print and around town. Like Ann Arbor, it will be a special place for everyone in the community to learn about, participate in and share everything that's going on in our area.

We have shared with you before in our pages the extreme challenges that our industry and our newspaper have faced over the last couple years. Out of those challenges has come a new opportunity. Our new strategy reflects shifting media consumption habits and advertising revenue in the newspaper business, and particularly in Michigan.

As we say hello to AnnArbor.com, we will say good-bye to The Ann Arbor News. When we launch AnnArbor.com, our community website will be complemented with a new print product two days a week - Thursday and Sunday - as well as a total market coverage product. In the interim, we will continue to publish our print newspaper seven days a week and share our news and information on our affiliate, mlive.com/ann-arbor.

We have studied readers' habits and the market closely, and you won't be surprised to know that Ann Arbor is uniquely well-suited to an online business model. In fact, 92% of the community has the skills and technology set-up for online news. And, we're committed to working with everyone in the community, especially those who have limited online access and familiarity.

We'll be building our new product from ground up in Ann Arbor, and we're excited to work with you to help shape the design and features that will best serve our community and advertisers.

While we are inviting current Ann Arbor News employees to apply for positions with the new company, it is with a heavy heart that I let you know that job losses will be unavoidable. We have an extremely talented staff at The Ann Arbor News and they have done a tremendous job through very difficult times. There is nothing they did or didn't do that would have sustained our seven-day print business model.

Along with the community, the architects of the new products will be Matt Kraner formerly of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tony Dearing of the Flint Journal, and me.

Matt will lead AnnArbor.com. Most recently, he had overall responsibility for circulation, advertising, marketing and prepress as CMO of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper. Previously, he was general manager of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Vice President of advertising at the Kansas City Star.

Many of you may remember Tony, who worked at The Ann Arbor News for 11 years, serving as business editor and later as managing editor. He left us in 1999 to become editor of The Bay City Times, and most recently was editor of The Flint Journal. He still has many ties to Ann Arbor, and his son, Adam, is a senior at the University of Michigan.

We hope you will embrace this change with us and help us along this journey to shape our new online media company. I'd like to invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with Matt, Tony and me at our first community forums at 2 p.m. April 2 at Campus Inn, and at 10 a.m. April 3 at Weber's Inn. Those will be the first of what we hope will be an ongoing community conversation. Before then, you will see enhanced reporting on our affiliate, mlive.com/ann-arbor, and we'll be able to answer your questions about the new company at www.AnnArbor.com.